Fight Fire with Fire
by Rene Costa
Chapter One - Early Turmoil
Nicosia, Cyprus.1959. 38 degrees Celsius.
I heard my mother screaming and crying, “please let him down!” but he continues shouting out “anyone who tries to release him, I will shoot them!”
This is my earliest memory.
Why had my father taken this action? Let me try to explain.
My father owned a very popular restaurant/nightclub in Nicosia. Many Greek Cypriot and various other celebrities visited regularly, and business was good. Andy had taken some money from the till to buy sweets, my father had found out and used him as an example of what happens to a child caught stealing from him. Little did I know then how much my father would have such a massive effect on my life and, unfortunately, so many times, not in a positive way.
At that time, I was the youngest of four children. Katie was the eldest at 9, sister Lefke 7 and brother Andy 5. We slept in our L - shaped house, the restaurant/nightclub was opposite. I could hear music playing and people drinking and enjoying themselves. We knew as a family that if our father had been drinking, he would start hitting our mother. Many times, she led us to the empty stables at the back of the house to hide and get away from my father’s violence. Sometimes we would take to the street and walk for hours until it was calm enough to go back. In later life I asked myself what the reason for his violent behaviour towards his own family was; he was successful, with a loving and caring wife and four children.
From the very beginning of his life, he had left home at the incredibly young age. Aged 9 worked the streets for several years hustling to survive, roaming the streets looking for food and sometimes physically fighting for a little money. He became well known in the back streets of Nicosia and people feared him. Nicknamed ‘Digrese’ (which is Hungry Tiger in English) he was in and out of hostels and so many times locked up, but that didn’t change anything. He became a loner by choice and didn’t share his problems with my mother; he always found his answers in a whiskey bottle.
His own mother and father had divorced and gone their separate ways; the fact was, he had never felt any love from his own father as he had left him when he was about 8-9 years old, he remarried three times in total and was always busy with his new families. My grandmother had also remarried three times and as a child, my father received no attention from his stepfather and therefore, from an early age, he lacked a father figure in his life. By the time he was seventeen he was causing such bad disruptions within the household that my grandmother could no longer cope with him. She had heard from a neighbour that a family priest who lived in Lapithos and had eight children, five daughters and three sons, was looking for a husband for his second daughter Maria.
The question was, why would my grandparents agree to marriage to a man with such a bad reputation? In Cyprus if a woman had reached age18 and was still not married, she was considered to be ‘on the shelf ‘. A meeting was arranged and before long they were courting. It became a regular thing for my father to drive from Nicosia to Lapithos village on his motor bike to pick my mother up. Within weeks everyone could see the changes she had made in him; he was now more settled and felt for once that he had met someone that showed him the love and affection that he was craving all his life.
Before long, the inevitable happened and my mother fell for my father`s charms and announced that she was expecting. My grandparents were mortified and acted before the pregnancy became obvious and embarrassed and ashamed the whole family. Had word got out in the village that the priest’s daughter had fallen pregnant out of wedlock, it would have caused a scandal, and so, on August 30th, 1950 my parents were married and expected their first child the following January, the rest was destiny.
Just before my fourth birthday, the nightclub burned down. I remember walking through the ashes and dust. Later in my life I heard that the assumption was that my father had burnt it down after a mad drink fuelled night. 1960 was a major turning point in my life. Cyprus had gained its independence which made it vulnerable to war as it was no longer protected by the Commonwealth.
My father was then making plans to emigrate to England, and as he was a qualified electrician, the British Government had granted him a visa to come to England. He worked at the British Embassy overseeing all the technical side of things and was given inside information that an invasion was on the horizon. The Greek and the Turkish Cypriots began a civil war in Cyprus, known as Bloody Christmas, it began on December 20th, 1963.
I have vivid memories of small explosions going off on most nights and curfews being introduced. On curfew nights we looked out our living room windows wondering what all the commotion was outside and heard the sounds of gun blasts. We saw people being dragged out of their homes, being made to stand against the walls like in an identity parade. Some individuals were pulled out and shot before our eyes. The loud screams of people were so frightening. It was definitely not a place to bring up your children. I guess now when I look back, I always wondered why it was allowed to happen.
Where we lived there was another family that lived a few doors down. They had four children too. Michael the eldest at 11, Nitsa 9, Chris 7 and Mario 5. We all played together, at the end of the street was a large derelict property which was bombed around 1948. It was one big heap of rubble, hills of earth and old furniture amongst other things were thrown onto it, everyone and anyone would fly tip there from time to time. However, it was of our favourite places as it was great for hide and seek.
One fateful day, Michael and his sister Nitsa were playing there when disaster struck. Unknown to us, in the rubble there was an unexploded bomb which had exploded killing Michael outright and injuring Nitsa so severely that she lost both her legs. It was a very tragic time but in later years the family moved to England where we would reunite.
What I remember of Nitsa was that she grew up to be a very beautiful woman, but she always felt fragile because of her struggles with her disability. She had met Stephen, a lovely young man, and fell in love and for a while everything was great.
What I remember of Nitsa was that she grew up to be a very beautiful woman, but she always felt fragile because of her struggles with her disability. She had met Stephen, a lovely young man, and fell in love and for a while everything was great.
Sadly, when it came to intimacy Stephen decided he could not deal with her disability and decided to leave her. Nitsa was devastated. One day, it was sometime in 1973, she decided to take her own life and jumped into the River Thames where she drowned. The family could not deal with it, but Nitsa had suffered for many years and this was the way she had decided to free herself. A very sad story.
Another friend I vaguely remember was a girl called Elena. It was very rare in Cyprus for murders to occur, so this was quite a story in the late 50's. Not wishing to become victims ourselves, we knew we could not be too careful. How could a young girl who lived in our street get murdered while on her way to school? She was just 8 years old and was found in ditch behind a piece of land, half a mile or so from where we lived. It was the main news everywhere and the major talking point for everyone. It was only in later years that we found out that she was murdered by her abusive father. That event was another reason why my father wanted to leave Cyprus, ironically for the safety of his family, even though he had his own demons to deal with.
Another of my early memories of life in Cyprus was visiting my great grandmother, Sotira, a large woman in her 80's. She would be sat in a massive bed with what must have been fifteen pillows behind her. I can clearly remember standing there looking up at her, being so little myself, it felt that I was standing looking up at a giant. She never said too much but would always keep pulling sweets from underneath her pillows for us.
We had a wonderful Alsatian dog called Wolf who was such a smart and beautiful dog, I loved him to bits, there was nowhere I would go, when Wolf wasn’t with me.
One day, while we were playing together, I wandered off to the local winery which was about fifty metres from our house and inadvertently managed to slide into the winery but couldn`t get out again. Wolf looked at me and started barking, hoping it would attract someone’s attention. Unfortunately, it didn`t! and so he ran off home to get help. My mother, some neighbours and Wolf came back to extricate me. My life had very nearly ended as a bottle of wine! I’d walk with my siblings to school with Wolf and then walk back home again with him.
In September 1960 when we set off in the car (to move to England, but I didn't know that at the time) I also didn’t know that it would be the last time I would see Wolf. The car was all packed up, the family inside and we drove off. The last abiding memory I have of Cyprus is looking through the rear window at Wolf chasing after the car. Gradually he got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared. In later years I asked what would have happened to him? I know in those times, if you didn’t have a license for your dog, they would shoot it. It was a thought I hated to think about.
Fight Fire with Fire is due to be released on Amazon by the end of August.
